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Why Google Apps?

Why we switched to Google Apps!

Yes, we are very pleased to have chosen Google Apps for Education as our email, calendar, online document creation, and class website platform. With your Google Apps account, you can sign in and begin using Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Sites, and all your other apps right away.

What is Google Apps?

Google Apps is a suite of web-based messaging and collaboration applications that Google hosts on their own servers. Google provides these applications as a "service," rather than as software you have to download and install. To access these applications, you simply use a web browser on any computer that's connected to the Internet.

Why did we choose Google Apps?

We looked for the best solution that could provide with us the following benefits:

Low cost to help us be Faithful Stewards of God's resources

A platform to support staff and students becoming Proficient Collaborators and Skillful Communicators

A solution to promote Self-Directed Learning

A platform to promote Critical and Creative Thinking

Additionally, we have realized the following benefits:

Lower infrastructure costs — All your email will be stored securely on Google's servers, so we'll no longer have to maintain email servers on-site.

Lower support costs — Because Google hosts the email and calendar services, there's no more email client software to maintain on your computer.

Innovative solutions — We can leverage the ongoing creative and technical solutions of the Google Apps platform to provide staff and students with powerful, easy-to-use tools for getting their work done.

Access to services from anywhere, at anytime — A key benefit of the Google-hosted solution is that we can access email, contacts, and calendar from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection, from anywhere in the world.

More collaboration features — With Google's next-generation applications, we can collaborate with colleagues, students, and partners more easily and efficiently than ever before.

Instant messaging — Because Google Apps includes Google Hangouts, we can leverage an instant messaging system for our organization.

Lots of storage — Each user gets over 1TB of online storage between Drive and Gmail, so you can keep all of your data and emails online. You'll no longer need to worry about deleting messages or saving them in offline folders.

Enhanced message organization and retrieval — With Gmail, you'll spend less time managing folders and searching for messages. For example, you can add one or more tags, or "labels," to your messages to organize and store them more efficiently. And with the Google-powered search feature, you can find any message quickly and easily, whether it's in your Inbox or stored in your message archive."

Easier calendar sharing — Google Calendar lets you and your team quickly and easily share your calendars with each other and specify the details you want to show. Calendar sharing is a great way to keep each other informed about your schedules. Now it's easier than ever to find out if someone is in a meeting, on a business trip, or on vacation.

Integrated chat and video conferencing — With the Google Hangouts instant messaging application, you can communicate instantly with other people in our organization right from the Gmail interface. In addition, you can automatically save your chats so you can retrieve important information later.

Store, sync, and share files with ease — Keep all your work in one secure place with Google Drive's online file storage. Access your work whenever you need it, from your computer, tablet, or phone.

Real-time collaboration — Using Google Docs editors, you can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and more, that you and your team can view and edit at the same time. You can still use your [Microsoft Office/other] products as needed, but now you'll have more options for storing and collaborating on your documents.

Easy-to-build team web sites — With Google Sites, your team has the ability to quickly publish a robust internal web site on which to gather all sorts of shared information, such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, files, and videos. You can even embed Google calendars, discussion forums, and other gadgets on your site! To learn more about using Googles Sites, click here.